On 10 August, during a trip to Bursa, Türkiye, at around 7.40pm there was a small earthquake that stopped the city for a moment.
I was awoken to the sudden shaking of my hand. The whole building was shaking. People ran out and amassed on the streets.
It was the first time I felt an earthquake, but as I decided to put pen to paper that evening, I thought about the earthquakes all around us…
Shaking of the Earth and of the heart
A sudden shaking of the Earth is a reminder about the Day of Judgment.
On that evening I recited Surat al-Zalzala (The Earthquake) a little slower in salah. And I spoke with my family about its verses and the state of people on that Day:
When the Earth is shaken [in] its ultimate quaking, and the Earth discharges its burdens, and man says, ‘What is [wrong] with it?’, that Day, it will report its news, because your Lord has inspired [i.e. commanded] it.
That Day, the people will depart separated [into categories] to be shown [the result of] their deeds. So whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.” [1]
A sudden event, like an earthquake, is a reminder of one’s position in life:
- Prophetic calls to hasten to do good
- To be vigilant about one’s obligations
- To be watchful over sins
All of this is viewed with greater clarity. Needless to say, the shaking of the Earth awakens something in one’s heart.
Why is the heart called “qalb”?
The heart also shakes, moves, alternates. The qalb is so called, because it wavers, taqallub.
A person’s environment, friendship circle, social media access, reading/watching material: each influence a person’s heart. Being in good company — in places wherein Allah is remembered — can have a very positive effect on a person’s heart!
And patiently stick with those who call upon their Lord morning and evening, seeking His pleasure.
Do not let your eyes look beyond them, desiring the luxuries of this worldly life. And do not obey those whose hearts We have made heedless of Our remembrance, who follow [only] their desires and whose state is [total] loss.” [2]
One of the Prophet’s (ﷺ) oft-repeated supplications was,
O the Turner of hearts, turn my heart to your religion.” [3]
That is a reminder that man is always vulnerable and his asking for stability is ever important. Any rupture in one’s spiritual heart is the most consequential.
A man once came to Sahl ibn Abdullah (radiy Allahu ‘anhu) and said,
A thief entered my home and stole my things.”
Sahl replied,
Thank Allah, for if the thief of the heart entered and corrupted your faith, then what would you do?”
Part of our work at Sapience Institute is to help those who have such ruptures in their faith. [4]
A genocide that shames the world
Scale of the destruction is incomparable
A sudden shaking of the Earth is not comparable to the horrific genocide unleashed on the people of Gaza.
The dropping of bombs in Gaza long ago surpassed the destructive power of bombs dropped in Hiroshima, and surpasses the bombs dropped in Dresden during WWII.
After just five days, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) posted on social media that it had dropped “about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets” — 1,200 bombs a day. [5]
This amounted to 50 bombs dropped every hour, roughly one every minute of a 24-hour day! A separate source reported, on the same day, that these 6,000 bombs comprised 4,000 tonnes of munitions. [6]
By mid-March 2024, over 72,000 people had been injured, with more than 8,000 others missing. More than half of Gaza’s homes, 360,000, had been damaged with over 46,000 completely destroyed. [7] [8]
The level of killing and destruction is beyond comprehension, yet it remains ever necessary to know why such horrific suffering — of a caged population undergoing a brutal siege — exists as something socially acceptable. And there are constituent parts including the role of the media, politicians, education, and activism — each of whom or each of which can have an effect on averting more death.
Population has been starved to death
There have been so many a tragic case of abuse in Palestine.
- Starvation of the Gazan people
- Rape of prisoners in the West Bank
- Killing of those who amass for basic food items
- Blocking of pathways to get essential aid into Gaza
- Demonstrations in Israel in support of the perpetrators
Each are a shaking of the Earth, an earthquake of the most seismic proportion on our collective conscience.
Disabled man mauled by IDF dog and left to die
Every resident has a story to tell, of martyrdom, of heroism, of sacrifice, of family, of compassion, of loss, of faith, of strength.
There is the case of 24-year-old Muhammad Bhar — who had Down’s syndrome and autism — left to be mauled by an IDF dog in front of his mother in the Shuja’iyya district of East Gaza. [9]
This speaks volumes about the sadism involved and about a world gone terribly wrong.
Case of five-year-old Hind Rajab
What about the case of five-year old Hind Rajab — murdered in cold blood by the Israeli war machine? And there are so many more examples. [10] [11] [12]
The genocide in Gaza has violated all standards of humanity; not only is it a continuation of decades of occupation of and oppression upon the Gazan and Palestinian peoples, an affront to any need to abide by international standards of legal and political national cohesion, but such a theatrical display of murder and mayhem undercuts something more palpable in the world’s human fabric.
Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan voiced clearly on CNN in October 2024 the scale of suffering in Gaza:
Every single person who does this for a living will tell you the same thing, that this is different. This is not a humanitarian crisis … this is genocide.
When 70 per cent of the population that are killed are women and children; when the population is starved of food, of water, of medicine; when you have repeated attacks on all the hospitals, the clinics, the aid distribution sites, the humanitarian aid agencies that try to help; more UN aid workers have been killed in Gaza that in UN’s history; when you have over 900 families that have been exterminated — that have been taken off the civil registry; when you have over 17,000 children that have lost one or both parents; when you have bakeries, aid distribution sites, churches, mosques, schools, and in the last 24 hours…
History books will be written on this, and countries will have to reckon, media agencies will have to reckon with their major role in the genocide of an entire population, and in the destruction of humanitarian law and rule of order.” [13]
The situation is far worse now.
We are living in a worldwide earthquake
The biggest global earthquake is happening right now in Gaza.
It has sieved the truthful from imposters; it has created new paradigms of courage, compassion, and sacrifice.
The earthquake alarm of our conscience can become outrage if we learn to keep the moral agency within us alive and not succumb to a state of amnesia and indifference.
[1] al-Qur’ān, 99:1-8
[2] al-Qur’ān, 18:28
[3] Sunan al-Tirmidhi, 2,140
[4] https://www.lighthousementoring.org/
[5] https://x.com/IAFsite/status/1712484101763342772
[7] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker
[12] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hind-rajab-foundation-prosecuting-israeli-soldiers-war-crimes
